Doug MacCash / The Times-Picayune'What's this supposed to be?' is the usual response to '9th Floor.'

Take the pathetic little fountain by South African artist Robin Rhode inside an abandoned playground bathroom on Caffin Avenue in the Lower 9th Ward. A belt-high jet of foamy water rising from a circle of white pebbles: That's it. Visitors scour the inside of the old restroom with their eyes to make sure they didn't miss anything, then they shrug and leave.

Time wasted.

As a thoughtful friend of mine pointed out, Rhode's installation might be a nod to Marcel Duchamp, the legendary French smart aleck who made art history 90 years ago when he bought a plain bathroom urinal and declared that it was sculpture. Duchamp called his radical, ready-made sculpture "Fountain."

Trouble is, it's not 90 years ago, coy references to art history make me cringe, and, since I first visited the forlorn bathroom, titled "9th Floor, " the water jet has petered out. Last week it was just a burbling pipe.

On to better things. I've fallen in love with "Kite, " a video sculpture on the fourth floor of the Contemporary Arts Center. A diamond-shaped piece of moving sky seems to be anchored by strings held by a pair of ghostly hands. The treetops racing past make you feel like a child lying in the back seat of a car, watching the world go by. It's simple, but there's something about it that just sweeps you up in sweetness and sadness.

Chris Granger / The Times-PicayuneLike an autumn dusk, 'Kite' is sweet and a bit sad.

The abundantly sensitive artist? Rhode, the same 32-year-old South African who created the dreary, pretentious 9th Ward fountain.

Not only was I surprised that one of my favorite and least favorite Prospect.1 pieces were made by the same artist, I was surprised that both pieces were much different from the Robin Rhode art I had seen in the past. I knew Rhode as a sort of stop-action graffiti artist who photographed himself during whimsical outdoor performances. For instance, Rhode might draw a car on a wall, then pretend to try to steal it. He might draw a basketball hoop on the ground and pretend to dunk the ball like Michael Jordan -- that sort of thing. Think of Banksy blended with Charlie Chaplin.

I've read that Rhode once drew a urinal on a museum wall and, uh, put it to its predictable use. Yuck.

All of this left me conflicted and curious. So, I sent an e-mail to Rhode at his home in Berlin and asked him to help me understand his yin-yang aesthetic.

The "Kite " video, he said, was made in New Orleans.

"The trees reminded me of frozen waves of water trapped in a moment before crashing down onto the road, " he wrote.

Rhode views the playground bathroom-turned-fountain as a kind of ready-made public monument. Though he said it could relate to Duchamp's "Fountain, " he didn't claim a direct connection.

"Water is used as the artistic medium and is understood as the element of rebirth and cleansing, " he wrote, "but, in the case of New Orleans and the Lower 9th, it became a symbol of pure devastation. One could still see the receding water marks on the interior walls of the toilet, a remnant of a kind of time lapse."

I told Rhode that we have a thriving graffiti community in New Orleans, but that I don't find most of the art to be very interesting - especially compared to his.

"My work embodies the mentality of street art," he wrote, "but functions differently in that the working process is captured on film, therefore an alternative medium becomes the work of art.
I allow the wall drawings to become ephemeral, the wall drawing screams to be erased, defaced or interacted with. Whereas graffiti artists are overly precious about their wall works as if they were Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel. Street artists need to be inventive, edgy, avant-garde, and to not fall into the trap of a laborious stylistic repetitiveness that is becoming inherent everywhere."

I so agree.

I asked Rhode if the graffiti urinal story was true. He said it was. The piece was executed in the South African National Gallery -- a 750 ml bottle of beer was involved.

I still think "9th Floor" is lame. But I have become a big Robin Rhode fan. He strikes me as a Bob Dylan sort of character. We're always going to love some stuff; we're always going to hate some stuff; we're always going to admire him for keeping it interesting.

What: A surrealistic kite and fountain by the South African artist.

When: Wednesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6, through Jan. 18.

Where: The kite is at the Contemporary Arts Center, 900 Camp St.; the fountain is in the 2500 block of Caffin Avenue at Law Street.